The Twelve Days of Christmas
by Lacey-Mae Emelia
Summary: On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, the present of misery for under the festive tree. HG/SS One Shot: Hermione is still reeling from the deaths of her closest friends at Christmas time. The unlikeliest of men is there to offer her comfort.


THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

* * *

_December 14__th_

At Christmas of all times, it isn't like Molly Weasley to stand still. Whilst a jumper might knit itself done with the help of enchanted needles, and whilst the bows around the presents might neatly tie themselves, there remain a thousand and one other tasks that need her seeing to. But still, under the glow from the hastily strung up fairly lights, she stands silent and frozen, head bowed as if in prayer, hands clutching at the glass bauble like rosary beads.

The fire cracks in the grate and not even the pop of the embers stirs her from her reverie. Before her, the mantlepiece stands crowded with cards, some proclaiming the happiness being wished upon her and her own during the festive season, but most dashing their sympathies in ink, as though they could make a difference. As though words on a page would mean anything.

A still figure watches her from the doorway, unwilling to intrude on the bent-head of grief, but finding solace in the matching pieces of a shattered heart. It seems impossible that the house should continue to function, that the bodies in their beds still live, nostrils filling with the scents of pine and cinnamon, skins alive to the cozy warmth of the fire, when so much is broken and gone; when a wrecking ball of death has crashed through life and left only splintered fragments in its wake.

A hand on her shoulder and a squeeze. Kindly eyes, made sad by loss, meet her own.

Arthur Weasley treads into the room on sockened feet. His arm reaches out around his wife, his fingers squeezing into the flesh of her shoulder and just like that, his touch wakes her from whatever dream she has been lost in and like a stasis released, her form crumples against him. He gently pries the ornament from her hands as she weeps, taking pains not to look at it himself as he sets it down. He is her husband, but he is human too.

He guides her from the room, two souls clinging desperately to one another and Hermione steps into the space that she had vacated, the scent of grief still heavy in the air. One shaking hand reaches out to the sphere of glass, her fingers ghosting over the childish letters embossed in green and red glitter: _Ron's first Christmas_.

An invisible hand touches lightly at her chest, and then it is squeezing tightly shut, constricting her ribs and the empty space within it where once her heart had been, until she can't even cry out for mercy. She doesn't even realise she had sunk to her knees until her face is only inches from the weathered rug which is steadily staining under her tears.

She doesn't know how long she stays trapped in her own misery, chained with a pain so intense that it seems impossible that she can still be alive, but when warm hands wrap themselves around her shoulders and gently pull her upright, she sees for the first time that darkness had descended and the fire burned low.

The newcomer says not a word, but guides her to the sofa and delicately takes the bauble from her grasp, hanging it back onto the boughs of the tree strung with tinsel and lights. She barely recognises when he sinks down next to her, but when the hand takes her own within it and draws gentle circles, skin to skin, she feels anchored in the roaring sea of herself. A low voice rumbles that it will all be okay, and only then does she allow herself to drift exhausted into sleep and be claimed by the darkness.

* * *

_December 15__th_

The kitchen floor is cold on her feet but she deigns the slippers packed neatly at the back of the closet. Just another reminder, another memory, that she cannot bear to touch.

The chair creaks as she lowers herself into it, vaguely aware that she is not the room's sole occupant despite the early hour. Her eyes trace over the half-moon stains and notches which weather the table and then at the steaming cup of tea and plate of buttered toast as it is laid before her.

She turns her eyes quizzically along the long fingered hand, over the blackly clad arm and up over the high-necked robes. A pale face looks down at her, all sharp angles and lines, frowning. "Eat" his lips command. Hermione watches as his mouth stretches and closes, forming over the letters. All just words, all just so meaningless.

His tall and slender frame folds into the chair next to hers, steam rising from the chipped mug encased in his hand. "Eat, Granger" he says again, eyeing her with those dark eyes which feel like bottomless starry voids. On some level, from some memory of another life, she knows that she should _feel_ his words, the spoken command, the unspoken consequences of non-compliance. But there is just - nothing. But blackness, and heartache. How can she eat when they are gone? How can she do something so mundane at drink tea when they are frozen dead in a hole in the ground?

A touch on her arm and she finds herself gazing into his eyes again. "Please" he says, as he gently laces his own fingers around hers and guides her hand to the warm mug. He wraps her fingers around it, speaking soft words of encouragement as she tips the sweet liquid down her throat, drop by drop.

When he leaves, she feels his absence, the coldness left in his wake, but then he is back bearing more tea, his hand once again guiding her own, his voice once again commanding her. She follows him and tasting the sweetness on her tongue, feels momentarily human.

* * *

_December 16__th_

When the grey December light pouring through the windows feels all too much like a breach in the heavens themselves, she pulls herself shaking into the wardrobe, closing the doors tightly and burrowing her face into the maroon jumper emblazoned with the letter 'R'. The smell is all at once bittersweet and terrible and she feels herself cleaved in two at its familiarity.

Tears have dampened the wool but still her ceaseless crying continues until exhaustion claims her and she sleeps dreamlessly, her head pillowed on her arm and the jumper that had once warmed the best of her friends.

She has not heard the calls throughout the house, the desperation in their voices as they search. She had been blind to their frantic quest to find her, because, as they had dared to voice aloud, who knows what she might have done.

When finally the door to the wardrobe is pulled open to reveal her broken form curled upon itself and that item of love, it is him that finds her. On stiff knees he bends to retrieve her, his arms slipping easily under her cold body and pulling her to his chest. A gentle and wordless warming spell banishes the numbness from her body and as he deposits her in bed, he strokes one long fingered hand over her hair and gently replaces the jumper back into her grip.

* * *

_December 17__th_

Today she manages half a slice of toast and a cup of tea. He sits next to her the whole time, no matter than she eats slower than he ever thought humanly possible, that the toast she nibbles on is stone cold by the time the last bite touches her lips.

He hovers around her protectively all day, not willing to admit to either the occupants of the household, nor indeed himself, that his heart had lurched in his chest like a failed levitation on finding her missing. He does not tell her that he had torn up half the house in his hunt for her, nor that he had routinely checked in on her sleeping form to ensure, and to satisfy himself, that she is safe, even into the small hours of the night.

She wanders about the house ghost-like until he gently steers her into the library. He sees a tension leave her taught body as she glances around her, as though this is the first time in days that she has come truly awake. He does not need to ask her what she wants to read as her hands trace lovingly over the old and battered copy of _Hogwarts: A History. _His deft fingers pluck it from the shelf and he warms as she sits beside him on the sofa and draws her legs underneath her.

He reads to her until she falls asleep against him, and even then he continues after fetching her a blanket and navigating her head into his lap. His fingers errantly play with the curls of her hair, and though he wonders at the appropriateness of the situation - he being her professor and she his student - he knows only too well the desert straits of loss and death. He knows how easy it is to slip into the miasma of misery and sink laden, choking on it all. No, he will not let that happen to her.

Only when darkness falls and the candles burn out their wicks does he carry her to bed and tuck her safely in, warding out the cold chills and unpleasant nightmares.

* * *

_December 18__th_

He finds her reading _Hogwarts: A History_, clutching the book in a brittle but loving hand. She is wearing the maroon jumper and it is pulled up over her nose, held in place with tightly bunched up fingers.

He settles himself into the chair opposite her, a Potions book held out before him but his eyes watching her over the top of his copy. She sighs contentedly as she turns the pages. She drinks the tea he proffers her and at lunch time consents to eating half a bowl of soup.

* * *

_December 19__th_

In the small hours of the morning where nightmares are abound, she wakes, the pain so numbing that it hurts. Her footsteps are silent as they find their way to the dining room and into the liquor cabinet stained with age.

She has only done this once before - the same cabinet, the same bottles but that memory filled with shushed laughter and unspoken delight. Now, it is only her, dragging along the chains of their demise with her. She pulls open the first bottle she finds. The smell is horrible, like pickling solvent and white vinegar, but still she knocks back a huge mouth full, spluttering as her throat is lit alight, but taking another drag anyway.

She drinks until she can barely open her eyes and until the pain is just a dim star in the night.

As is his now nightly custom, he wakes nearly hourly to check on her. But the moonlight standing through the windows shows a bare bed and immediately his chest constricts. His one hope - the library - yields no results, and nor does the kitchen. His heart is in his mouth, although he does not stop to wonder why it is that he cares so, when he finds her with half lidden eyes and liquor heavy breath in the dining room.

His first thought is to chastise, but the words die on his lips. He has been in this situation too many times to count and he knows that harsh words will do her no good. He lifts her by her arms, and then takes her whole weight against him as she falls. Her words are slurred into his chest. He can only make out one:

"Gone".

When he deposits her back in bed, her hand reaches out to him, her fingers manacled around his wrist. She does not need to say it for him to know why. He settles himself back onto the bed, his body long and straight, hands clasped on his stomach. She curls up against him and though he wishes he could place his arms around her and draw her to him, he restrains.

In the morning he brings her water and potions and when the liquor brings itself up and she chokes on the burning of her nose and eyes, he is there to hold back her hair and stroke her back.

* * *

_December 20__th_

She has a potions journal resting on her blanketed knees, and as she reads her finger traces along her word as though keeping her place.

At lunch time she dares broach a question with him and for the first time in his life, he finds himself delighted rather than infuriated. He explains the distinctions between the a Slavic Root and Barkwood with his methodical lecture style, watching as she absorbs the information, her lips silently moving after he has finished speaking, as though repeating it back to herself. He cannot help but find it obscenely endearing.

It is only hours later when he hears the smallest of sniffs, does he realise she is crying. He lets the book he is reading fall to his lap, wishing to stand and take her in his arms but finding himself incapable of doing so. She apologises. He tells her not to, of course.

* * *

_December 21__st_

It is 3am in the morning and he thinks she is asleep, when she turns to him.

"They think it, I know, but we weren't a couple. Still though, I loved him, them both, like brothers".

This time when the tears caress her cheeks, he takes her swiftly into his arms.

* * *

_December 22__nd_

At lunch time, they venture outside. The sky is an almost obnoxious azure, though the cold bites through every layer of clothing. Severus can smell snow in the air.

Her hand is laced in the crook of his arm and he walks slowly so as to accommodate her smaller gait. He asks her about her plans for the future. She mentions that she would like to finish her time at Hogwarts, but that returning is just too hard to contemplate right now. He nods silently, wondering if perhaps he can tutor her privately for her eighth year.

As she talks about all the future careers that she has every imagined, her cheeks take on a faint blush, even in the cold, and for the first time in weeks, she is animated. As lovely as a winter rose, he thinks to himself as they walk in their slow meander around the green.

Only when the first snowflake catches in her hair does he stop her and reach down to plant a delicate and chaste kiss on her lips.

* * *

_December 23__rd_

He casts a silencing spell on the room as she begins screaming, her voice ripping apart the silent night. She begs and pleads for their lives and he feels so desperately like crying that he can do nothing to ease her burden, to erase the sharpness of her pain.

Instead he holds her tightly, shushing her and whispering all the while that it will all be alright, that he is there. When the screaming stops, he is left holding her closely to his chest, her face buried into him and his arms running across her body to dispel the shaking and the frightened mewing.

"I won't let you go" he tells her, stroking at her cheeks and over the delicate arches of her eyes as she sleeps unsteadily, her scent in his nostrils and the memory of her lips on his own.

* * *

_December 24__th_

He watches her over the rim of his tea cup, and wonders how he never saw before how beautiful she is. The graceful movements of her hand as it reaches for her tea cup distract him, the inner workings of her mind once vexatious, now so intriguing. It is only when he is alone that he berates himself for allowing himself to feel this way, about a student no less.

It is Molly who corners him on one of the rare moments that they aren't together. Her eyes are red-rimmed, but she holds herself strong and straight-backed. He wonders if she will shout and deride him for what she can so evidently see in him, but instead she simply squeezes his shoulder.

"Look after her" she says as she leaves the room, not hearing his reply.

"For as long as she'll let me, I will".

* * *

_December 25__th_

He hands the small silver wrapped box in the confinement of her room, watching silently as she peels back the paper. Her eyes widen as they trace over the contours of the necklace, her fingers reaching to stroke at the cool metal and stones.

She is silent for a moment but then she whispers on its beauty and he agrees, but his eyes do not leave her.

He takes it from her and places it around her neck, the curls she holds exposing the creamy skin of her neck and he cannot help but run one long finger across it as the clasp is fitted. She turns to him on the bed, her face only inches from his, one finger absently touching at the stone sat above her breast.

He can tell she is nervous, unsure. She looks as though she may speak, but then her mouth closes and with actions she proceeds, her mouth reaching his with the force of pent up emotion. He draws her close to him, supporting her weight in his arms as one of his hands twines in the raucous curls about her head.

When she pulls back, her lips are rosy and her cheeks flushed. Her eyes are wet and he knows it is from the deep well of sadness that resides inside of her, so much more acutely felt when there is actually something to _feel_. He runs the pad of his thumb over her lips, capturing a tear as it falls and swiping it away.

"Thank you" she whispers.

He does not say anything back, but holds her close as her emotions rain down.


End file.
